


Boys With Crowns

by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fluff, Forests, Getting Together, M/M, Scorbus Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 04:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17135045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/pseuds/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion
Summary: There are monsters in the world, and people with fantastic abilities, and a forest that is always behind you unless you walk towards it. There are many, many things in the world, but there definitely aren't any humans.Albus doesn’t know what to do with them, these heavy feelings with no name that belong solely to Scorpius, so he just feels them and feels them and thinks he might lose his breath with the weight of it all.





	Boys With Crowns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snail_dude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snail_dude/gifts).



> Hi little-humanoid! This is your secret santa gift! I didn't make it Christmassy, since you said you don't really celebrate Christmas, and I'm afraid there's no ghosts here, but I made it as fantasy-world type as possible! I hope you like it! <3
> 
> Everyone else: no warnings, and happy reading! I hope you enjoy it! <3

The Near Year folds in, dark hands reaching and grasping at the wisps of the last thirteen months. 

“I don't think there’s anything out there, y’know.” Albus sips at his soup, wiggling his bare toes by the fake fire. The coals are violet, the flames indigo, the ash a pale, dusty lilac. The room isn’t warm enough, really, not on a winter night as cold as this, but Scorpius, Lysander and Lorcan make the air a bit more sturdy.

It’s late, and the adults have gone to bed, but at the Lovegood’s house, that means nothing where children are concerned. The night is for children. Children are for the night.

The wind shakes the glass in each oval window, agreeing. 

“You don’t?” Scorpius asks, even though he knows the answer. He watches Albus from too far away, skinny legs criss-crossed, eyes alight with a curious intensity. He is awkward and young, ready to pull apart Albus’s reply kindly.

Albus takes another sip, swallows hot soup flavoured with spice and eelgrass. “I think it’s all just superstition.”

“It’s _not_ superstition,” Scorpius insists, leaning forward eagerly, elbows on his knees. “You think everything’s superstition!” 

“There’s nothing out there.”

“There’s werewolves,” Lorcan points out delicately, with a nervous tap of his fingers against his flannel bottoms. He’s the only one sat on a chair, the shortest of the four perched high above the rest of them. “Everyone knows that. They caught one a few months ago and set it free. If there are werewolves then logically there must be humans out there too.” 

If it were Albus, he’d have tacked a ‘right?’ on the end of that sentence. But Lorcan doesn’t ask questions. 

“No such thing as werewolves,” Lysander says, yawning from his place on the rug. “No such thing as humans, either.”

Lysander settles down a bit more, lounging in an elegant sprawl on the woven greens and blues. Albus always pinks up whenever their eyes catch, feels shifty, like he needs to run. Lysander has a way of looking at people like they’re prey, and the gold in his growing hair makes sense, sometimes.

He feels warm around Lysander, and safe around Lorcan, and for some reason, he feels like he’s _home_ around Scorpius. 

“There are,” Scorpius says, his cheeks turning red as he puffs them up. “There are humans out there. There _must_ be.”

They’re eleven and twelve and twelve and twelve, and none of them know quite who they are, or what the world is really like beyond the cartoil gate. Albus does know that there aren’t any werewolves, though. 

And there definitely aren’t any humans.

***

“It’s just a forest,” Albus argues, putting his game down on the rickety table beside him. The chunky wooden pieces rattle like a box of pasta shells, and the orb at the centre of the board takes on a warning tinge of blue. He got it as a Near gift, thirteen months ago, and now a new Near Year has rolled around, and he’s still glued to it when he’s bored or restless. It makes for a good escape. 

Lysander hums sleepily in agreement, brushing out the end of his tail in methodical strokes. 

Lorcan sighs, ever in the middle, and rearranges his glasses on his nose. He has a special set, now, that hides the eye in the middle. It’s unheard of, to hide what you are, but Lorcan doesn’t like having more than one eye, for reasons unknown and untold.

“I respectfully disagree,” Scorpius says, all smiles and excited eyes, almost hovering with excitement. “Albus, seriously! How can you say that it’s just a forest when we’ve never been inside it? We don’t know what’s out there, not really, so we can’t make an informed decision until we see for ourselves.” 

Scorpius isn’t going to back down on this. He never does, and that’s partly why Albus feels all these things that he doesn’t know how to organise or label, all these things that are directed firmly at Scorpius and nobody else. That’s never happened before now: Everything else that he’s ever felt, he’s felt for more than one person in the world. But Scorpius is the sole owner of these feelings. 

Albus doesn’t know what to do with them, these heavy feelings with no name, so he just feels them and thinks he might lose his breath with the weight of it all.

“You have this argument every Near Year,” Lysander intones, clearly uninterested. His tail looks shiny in the light of the green fire, grassy hues reflecting off the golden tufts at the end, pulled smooth and glossy. 

“It might be a good idea for you to put it to rest,” Lorcan suggests, folding down the corner of his book. “It’s getting irritating.” 

_“Getting?”_

They all ignore Lysander scoffing. 

Albus sighs, settling back against the cushions of the Lovegood’s sofa. They see each other often, the four of them, but the beginning of the Near Year, the night when all the adults drink their combined weight in wine and ale and fall asleep in heaps wherever they stand -- that’s a night that they spend together, without fail. It’s a night for them, for they are (twelve and thirteen and thirteen and thirteen) children still. 

“It’s gonna be a forever argument,” Albus says, shrugging, hiding his smile. He kind of likes that. The idea of forever is tangible when it’s wrapped up in always coming back here, always listening to Scorpius insist that humans exist in the forest outside. He likes the thought of forever, where Scorpius is concerned. 

“I like that,” Scorpius says, echoing Albus’s thoughts. He scrambles up from the rug and launches himself forwards, flying through the air. He lands on Albus’s toes, all elbows and knees, lighter than leaves, but Albus makes sure to complain about his monstrous crushing weight regardless. 

“Oh for the love of Merlin.” Lysander rolls his eyes, chucking his jewelled comb aside and flicking his tail. “Get a room.” 

“We’re already in a room, Lysander,” Scorpius says, rolling his eyes right back as he soars past the point. Lorcan sighs pointedly, and is pointedly ignored. 

Scorpius turns, crinkled eyes and all, and pokes Albus in the chest, looming over him. Albus’s heart stops under his fingertip. 

“One day I’m going to prove you wrong, Albus Potter,” Scorpius promises him. He looks excited at the prospect. 

Albus’s mouth feels dry. “Looking forward to it.” 

***

Scorpius takes to flying like he takes to everything else he’s ever done: Clumsily, with bad grace and a determination to come out on top of the world. It’s not that he wants to be better than everyone else, it’s that he wants to be better than some strange past version of himself that no longer exists, or perhaps never did. 

“You would be a Wingardium, wouldn’t you,” Albus grouches, yanking tufts of grass out of the ground. The ground is cold beneath him, cool earth pressed against his soft stomach, where his shirt has rolled up. “You couldn’t be something unimpressive and boring.” 

If he cranes his neck, he can see Scorpius, framed by woollen clouds. 

Most of the world doesn’t have a label anymore. People are just whatever they are, with wings, spikes, spines, fur and fanged teeth. Extra eyes and tails. Some give themselves names, of course, if they want to appear proud and important (which is always funny in Albus’s opinion). But there are those that come with names already attached. 

“They say that Names used to be spells,” Lorcan tells them all, in his carefully perfected lecturers voice. “Wingardium, Incendio, Aguamenti. They were all spells, a way that humans channelled magic, and then when… when the Growing happened, the magic went inside them and we inherited it, thousands of years later.” 

“That’s if you agree that we came from humans,” Lysander points out, ever contrary. It’s probably just to watch Lorcan turn purple in the face, indignant and enraged. 

“Where else would we have come from?” Lorcan snaps crisply. 

Lysander shrugs. He flashes a smile that’s mostly teeth, a little sharper than most. “Out of the forest, maybe. Or the ground, like weeds.”

“Wingardium suits you,” Albus says, still grouchy and not paying much attention to the lecture or the argument. If your life comes attached with a name, like Scorpius, then it means you’re important. Wingardium’s, Incendio’s, Aguamenti’s. All important. 

“Yeah, it does,” Lysander agrees idly, astonishing them all silent for a split second before he adds, “You’ve always been full of hot air.” 

The split second stitches itself closed. 

Lorcan rolls his eyes. “Of course it suits him, it _is_ him. He didn’t acquire it. He’s always been a Wingardium.” 

Scorpius dips and rolls, landing much more smoothly than the last time he descended from the sky. 

“It doesn’t feel like that,” Scorpius says, breathless with laughter as he lies in the grass. His hands bang clumsily against Albus’s wrists as he rolls to get up, and the touch sends sparks all through Albus’s veins. “This all feels new to me. I never woke up floating in the air before, and I couldn’t - I couldn’t feel like this when I didn't know what I was.”

Albus catches his eye, and the question falls before he can catch it. “What does it feel like?”

_Knowing what you are. What does that feel like?_

His mouth doesn’t say what it means. He never has to explain with Scorpius though. Scorpius knows, always knows. He wriggles closer, staining his jumper with mud, getting green streaks on his jeans. His grin feels close, but far too far away. 

“It feels like flying, even with my feet on the ground,” Scorpius says. 

***

The cartoil gate looks greasy in the dark. It’s an aged thing, taller than trees with roots that reach lower than tombs. The wood is cracked in places, and it creaks as they stand, uncertain and emboldened all at once. 

“Are we really going to do this?” Lorcan hisses out the side of his mouth. His glasses are lopsided, the silver eye above his nose visible. 

Lysander shoves him, but his voice is just as low. “If we don't, they’ll never shut up about humans being out here. I want to get through one year without one of their stupid arguments.”

“They aren’t stupid.” Scorpius is of the opinion that nothing in the world is stupid, just not educated enough. Albus could disagree. 

“They’re a bit stupid,” Albus counters. 

“Oh for--” Lysander cuts himself off, rolling his eyes as he stalks towards the gate. His hand hesitates, just briefly, over the silver knocker. Only briefly though. He lifts the metal, warped from years of wear and tear, and knocks three times on the cartoil gate.

“We’re not supposed to go into the forest,” Lorcan says, fidgeting on the spot. 

Scorpius edges closer, and Albus moves with him, glued to his heels. 

_The forest is always behind you, unless you walk towards it._ Albus never really understood that nonsensical saying, not until now. Whenever he’s walked in the world, to markets or shops or school or to Scorpius’s house, the forest has always been behind him, always visible in the corner of his eye. It’s an inescapable place. He thinks there’s some truth to the idea that they came from the forest, once, where the humans used to lurk. 

He doesn’t think they’re still there, though. 

“We’re not supposed to take mum’s apple cider and use it for an experiment, either, but you didn't have a problem with that,” Lysander points out. 

The cartoil gate creaks open, silencing them all. Oil drips down from the very top, running in rivulets, following the grain of the wood. It pools on the ground by their feet, thick puddles of gloop.

“Is that supposed to happen?” Albus asks. Scorpius twitches at the sound of his voice, bumping their shoulders together. 

Lysander shrugs. “No idea. Are we going?”

The cartoil gate opens further, the wind blowing through. Albus feels a touch against his hand, knuckle on knuckle, and then it’s gone as Scorpius squares his shoulders.

“We’re going.”

They go. Scorpius leads them, his feet hovering above the grass. He moves eerily quickly, although Albus can’t find it in him to be unnerved by him, even when he looms or swirls around him in a circle. 

Albus is a close second, and the twins bring up the rear of their little parade. Albus listens to them argue quietly, their hissing voices echoing off the blank hills.

“We’re here,” Scorpius says, as they reach the first row of trees. They’re shorter than the rest, small stumps, newly grown. 

“Last chance,” Albus says. “We could go back. Luna probably has soup and sandwiches. They won’t even have to know we left.”

“We’re already through the gate,” Scorpius protests, but he sounds anxious too, his fingers intertwining as he wrings his hands. They stand at a stalemate, the night lending food to their fear. Lorcan is the one to swear explosively, marching forward and shoving past them. 

“You made us come this far,” Lorcan says, shattering the shroud of fearful silence. “We’re bloody well going the rest of the way.”

Lysander barks a triumphant laugh, following. 

The rest of the silence shatters too, and suddenly the dark and twisted trees in the night seem like nothing but toothpicks in the gloomy bathroom cupboard. Relief is like a hot drink on a cold day, prickling and frothy. 

Albus grins at Scorpius. Scorpius grins back, almost exasperated by their friends, even though Albus is pretty sure that out of the four of them, he and Scorpius are the most exasperating ones there. 

“I’m still going to prove you wrong,” Scorpius promises him. He does a complicated little flourish with his hands, bowing Albus through the woods, and comes up flushed and happy. 

“Idiot,” Albus says, fond and flustered. He grabs Scorpius’s wrist, his touch gentle on the inside, uncaring to onlookers. They walk together into the forest. 

***

Further in, the forest grows thick and dense. The trees still in their preformative dance, entwined in close embraces, thickly intimate. Albus steps over a gnarl of nettles and roots, searching for the path. 

“No werewolves yet,” he says, just so he can hear Scorpius laugh quietly. There’s mist all around, blanketing the frost-bitten carpet. It snakes playfully around their ankles. 

“No humans either,” Lysander adds. He drags his hand along every bit of bark he sees, leaving claw marks in the malleable moss-eaten surfaces. “Just a lot of puddles and mud.”

“And twigs,” Lorcan says, picking one out of his hair with distaste. “And leaves and bugs and freezing cold wind.”

“It’s not _that_ cold,” Scorpius says, but he doesn’t argue over the rest. He lets the wind carry him up over a fallen branch, landing lightly on the other side and disappearing from view.

“You could help, you know,” Albus calls, putting both palms flat against the branch. It’s huge, blocking the whole path, blocking the whole forest, it feels like. It completely obscures Scorpius. Whichever tree it fell from must have been old, ancient, crumbling at the roots. “We can’t all be fancy Wingardium’s.” 

“No,” Lysander agrees. “Some of us are better.”

Lysander readies himself, crouching, and then leaps. He clears the branch easily, even though it’s twice the height of all of them. His tail whips behind him as he vanishes over the other side. 

“Show off,” Albus mutters.

Lorcan sighs. “C’mere, Albus. There’s a space underneath.”

Albus wedges himself into the gap under the branch, mud sticking to his fingers. It’s far enough into winter that there’s a frost and icy netting over every fallen leaf, and it makes the paths slick.

“Come on, Albus,” Lorcan says impatiently, crawling in behind him. Albus grunts, wriggling free, and finds himself faced with Scorpius’s grinning face. 

“Hi there,” Scorpius says, pulling him out from under the branch. “Are you alright? You look a bit red.”

Albus rolls his eyes, brushing off his clothes. Scorpius joins in, their hands colliding as Albus sheds his cloak of leaves and dirt. He lights up wherever Scorpius touches. 

“There’s another one,” Lysander says, sounding uncharacteristically surprised. “Another branch.”

Albus turns, and so does Scorpius. Lorcan pops free from the branch with an irritable huff, and Albus mumbles apologies for forgetting him as he pats Lorcan’s shoulder. 

“Oh, there is!” Scorpius drifts closer on a stolen breeze. “It’s almost exactly the same.”

There’s no almost about it. There’s another enormous fallen branch, or perhaps they’re just fallen trees. High, high above them, the leaves are dark and musty, blocking out the light. The mist has a glow, and it fills the air, circling the fallen branches that cage them in, now. 

“It does look like the other branch,” Albus admits. “I wonder why they fell this close together.”

“Maybe they’re in love,” Scorpius says. Albus can’t tell if he’s joking or not, but he grins anyway. 

“Maybe they’re not branches,” Lysander suggests. He takes a step back, hands in his pockets, ever casual. His face tells a different story, unsure for the first time. 

“What else could they be?” Albus pokes the first one, towering above him even on its side. “Looks pretty branch-like to me.”

Scorpius hums thoughtfully. He puts one hand on the branch and slides it sideways, walking until he disappears into the silvery mist. Albus sucks in a breath, his heart racing as he intently into the fog. 

“It joins!” Scorpius shouts, his disembodied voice echoing through the forest. Albus breathes out, slow and steady, when he darts into view. “It joins to the other branch!”

“Oh,” Lorcan says abruptly, his face growing pale. All three of his eyes close for a moment, and when he opens them, he looks afraid. 

“What?” Lysander shuffles forward warily. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Lorcan hedges, clearly not wanting to continue. “I just remembered something. A story.”

Lorcan keeps stories in his middle eye. He opens it, then, the other two still closed, and Albus gets a glimpse of fear. 

Quite suddenly, they are not grand kings, off on an adventure in the woods. They aren’t royalty, they aren’t brave knights, they aren’t more magical than the world around them. Bravery has a way of making you feel invincible, but some things, Albus knows, cannot be laughed away, cannot be brushed off like leaves and dirt. 

Quite suddenly, they are just boys again, very small in a place much bigger than them.

“We should go back,” Albus decides. “We won’t argue about it anymore, if you like. We haven’t seen any humans, but they could be farther in, and werewolves are probably around too, okay? Let’s go back.”

They go back. 

The banks are slick with oil by the time they reach the cartoil gate, and their feet leave sticky imprints on Luna’s carpet. She says nothing when they stumble in, shaking and quiet, cold. 

She says nothing, but she puts extra spices in the soup, hangs her weaversphere up in the window and hums dreamily until they fall asleep in heaps on the rug. 

***

“Do you remember a few years ago?” Albus asks. He’s in the Brisk Market, being bumped and bashed by people on their way to here and there. It’s almost the Near Year, the night when everything closes in, when the circle joins, tail to head, and the next thirteen months begin. 

Lorcan peers at him over the top of his glasses, holding onto a packet of seeds. “I expect so. Be more specific, though.”

“We went into the forest,” Albus says quietly, leaning closer. The stall tender looks like the nosy sort, horns glinting like embers. “We opened the gate and went inside, and we got scared.”

Lorcan grips the seeds a little too tightly, and the stall tender snorts in warning, smoke rings cascading from his nose. 

“I don't think we should talk about it.” Lorcan puts the seeds in his basket and picks up a bundle of dried herbs, passing it all over the stall. “These too, please. Unwrapped.”

The stall tender bypasses the brown paper with a huff. 

Albus fishes some coins out of his pocket and hands them to Lorcan when prompted. He’s sixteen now, but he doesn’t feel it. 

They follow the path back to the Lovegood’s, where they spend every Near Year. Scorpius is hovering up on the roof, in the distance, untangling kite strings from where they’ve wrapped around the chimney.

“They weren’t branches,” Lorcan says suddenly, as the path grows steeper. “What we found in the forest, they weren’t branches.”

Albus stops. His feet make noises in the ground, little marks among the gravel. He doesn’t ask why they’ve stopped not talking about it. 

“What were they then?”

Lorcan taps above his middle eye. “I keep all my stories here, Albus. I read one, once, when I was little. Or maybe mum told it to me. I can’t remember. I just remember the story.”

“What was the story?” Albus presses. Some parts of him, the parts that remember the fear and the mist, they don't want to know. But the rest does. The rest, the parts wearing a twig-crown and dirt-cloak, the rest of Albus wants to know. 

Lorcan watches him. And then he tells him.

***

Scorpius rolls closer on the rug, until their noses touch. “Really? He really said that?”

“He did.” Albus finds it hard to think when they’re this close, when he can feel Scorpius’s knees against his, when the blanket covers them both. The fire is dead, buried, and yet he still feels warm. 

“Antlers.”

Scorpius looks wonderstruck, their voices nothing more than hushed whispers. 

Albus nods, his hair shushing against the rug. “Antlers. Not branches.”

“Did he say how? Or where they came from?”

Albus glances over Scorpius’s shoulder, to where Lorcan is asleep on the sofa. Lysander’s sprawled in the chair, his eyes closed, but that doesn’t mean he’s asleep. Albus shuffles even closer, bowing his head slightly so he’s talking to Scorpius’s throat. 

“He said that humans are born with antlers,” Albus whispers, feeling his heart try hard to escape. “When they’re young, they’re tiny. And then as they grow, the antlers grow too. They only shed them when they’ve reached unimaginable heights, he said, and they do it on purpose.”

Scorpius parts his mouth in a gasp, eyes wide and watery. “On purpose?”

Albus nods again. “To blend in. To hide what they are from us. We’d know it was them, if they had antlers. Or we would have, if we’d grown up with the stories. But things have been quiet for so long that people have stopped being so afraid, so we wouldn’t know anymore, I guess.”

Scorpius doesn’t seem too bothered by this. He rolls over onto his back, flopping against the ground like a huge weight has just been lifted from his narrow shoulders. 

“So they really do exist,” Scorpius says softly, staring up at the ceiling. He stays silent for a while, lost in his thoughts. 

“Scorpius,” Albus murmurs, waiting until Scorpius glances his way before he adds, “I guess you proved me wrong after all.”

Scorpius gives a shout of laughter, slapping a hand over his mouth when Lorcan shifts. They fall deadly silent, and Albus grins, biting his bottom lip to keep the laughter in when the twins mumble in sync, turning over as best as able. 

_Not yet,_ Scorpius mouths. 

***

They are seventeen and eighteen and eighteen and eighteen, and for the first time, the Near Year is different. Thirteen months draw to a close, and Albus finds himself standing outside the cartoil gate. Lorcan is away, studying. Lysander is away, dancing and fighting.

“Albus?”

Scorpius moves down the bank towards him, his hand a comforting pressure against Albus’s shoulder. 

“I’m supposed to know by now,” Albus says, fiddling with a weaversphere in his pocket. “You all knew what you were ages ago. Eighteen years is a long time to go without knowing who you are.”

“I know who you are,” Scorpius says gently. His gaze flicks to the gate. “What are you doing here? Admiring the scenery?”

Albus manages a small snort of laughter. “Luna gave me a weaversphere to keep away the humans. I think she knows where I’m going.”

He pats his pocket, and Scorpius hums. 

“Where we’re going,” he corrects, pulling Albus forward. 

They knock three times, hands clasped over warped silver. The cartoil gate creaks open, but no oil spills out this time to mark where they shouldn’t have gone. 

“D’you remember how it felt the first time?” Albus asks. “Coming here?”

“Terrifying,” Scorpius says. His hand slips down Albus’s arm and tangles in his fingers, much like the trees they reach soon tangle together. “Exhilarating. A bit like flying, really.”

“With your feet on the ground?” Albus teases. He can’t think much around the hand wrapped in his.

Scorpius turns pink. “Shut up. I was young and that’s the only way I could describe it, Mister I Don't Know Who I Am.”

There is something quite fun about melodrama, until it’s turned back on you.

“At least we admit that we’re ridiculous and dramatic,” Albus says. He squeezes Scorpius’s hand. “Wouldn’t be much fun if we weren’t. Come on.”

The forest breathes quietly around them. The mist is there too, but it doesn’t glow until Albus steps through it. Scorpius watches the steamers of fog with a curious expression, swinging their hands gently.

“You know, sometimes I think we imagined it all,” Scorpius muses, as they walk. “We were pretty young still. I feel like we got too excited and nervous because of the dark and the cold, and we scared ourselves into thinking it was worse than it was.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was bloody terrifying, and we forget as we get older.”

Maybe there are different things to be afraid of when they’re older. Maybe humans aren’t the biggest threat. 

Scorpius giggles, childish and whimsical. He hops, letting go of Albus’s hand, and lands in a foot in the air, arms held wide for balance, graceful as any feathered creature. 

Humans grew because they got too big for their boots. Their egos swelled and their arrogance bloomed and they ballooned up, growing taller and wider until the only place they fit in was the forest, a place of even taller, wider trees and darkness. There wasn’t enough magic to fill them, so they turned dull and terrible, becoming great hulking things that wandered the earth clumsily. 

They would eat you, said the adults, if they had the chance. If they ate enough, they might get their magic back.

Albus doesn’t think he could be afraid of them, not with Scorpius here, not with him prancing about in the air, dancing on invisible steps and stages, flying without wings. 

“Leaving me all alone?” Albus calls, as Scorpius glides higher. He can see the antlers in the distance, the antlers that humans shed. They’ve gathered moss since he last saw them.

Scorpius lands in front of him in a sweeping breeze, giddy and red-faced. “Would I do that?”

“Maybe not on purpose.”

“Maybe not at all.” Scorpius takes his hand again, grounded. Albus likes how warm and bright he feels around Scorpius. “Do you feel more like you, yet?”

“I’m not even sure why I came in here.” Albus shrugs. “I think I just wanted -- I don't know. Everything’s changing.”

“Not everything.” Scorpius stops, right beside the antlers. “Not unless you want it to.”

He’s biting his lip. Albus wonders why he won’t look at him, before the words wash over him. The hand holding makes a bit more sense, now. 

“You’re being melodramatic again,” Albus says. The giddiness in his voice is unmatched by anything. “If you want something…”

“Well, I want to kiss you, and keep holding your hand,” Scorpius says, with reasonable practicality. “I’d like it if you flew, too. I could take you up, if you like?”

He points up at the leaves, high above. 

“How about we try the first part of that before you try and kill me?” Albus says drily. Scorpius bats at his shoulder, exasperated and laughing. 

“I won’t drop you.” Scorpius startles. “Oh!”

“There it is,” Albus teases. “I’d like it if you kissed me too.”

That’s all there is to it. It’s a trembling first kiss, just an awkward press of mouths until Scorpius rights himself clumsily and Albus unstiffens, and they both melt forward. Albus can feel them both shaking. He breathes carefully in through his nose, nudging Scorpius closer with a hesitant hand on the small of his back. 

It’s important, he thinks distantly, to get this right. Not that it could ever be wrong. 

Scorpius draws back just as he thinks it, and there’s something in his eyes. He drinks Albus in, his pale hair luminescent thanks to the glow of the mist. And the glow of the forest. And the glow of Albus. 

“Oh,” Albus says, raising his hand to look at his shining fingertips. 

“You’ve always had bright eyes.” Scorpius puts his hand on Albus’s face, his voice hushed and awed. “I wondered, but I wasn’t sure. You’re a _Lumos,_ Albus.”

Albus swallows thickly. “This might be the best day I’ve ever had.”

Scorpius laughs, a little pink in the face. He comes closer, wrapping his arms tightly around Albus’s waist. 

“Does it feel like flying yet?”

Albus only has a split second to notice the mischief on Scorpius’s face before they’re soaring upwards. He yells, clinging tightly to Scorpius, foreheads pressed together. He shuts his eyes tightly, grinning as the wind whips around them and his heart races, still glowing. 

Scorpius presses a laughing kiss to his cheek, hugging him as the world drops away. 

The antlers, when Albus cares to look, are much, much smaller from up here. 

*

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you! <3


End file.
